patrick stephens at psjs.net

One became all and the world was born out of loneliness.

It had been eight years since he’d first heard that story.  But still, he was surprised the first time he saw her.

Years ago, before he’d seen even his second Primature, his father told him the story.  They’d just finished eating supper.

His mother cleared the dishes from the center of the room and filled the kettle with the last of the water from the basin in the corner.  She moved their great soft straw bed closer to the fire and spread out the blankets.  His father sat in the large bent-willow chair and he’d crawled onto the bed and stared out the window at the great silver moon.

Dur Ar Midnday 3576

“Tell me a story,” Wedge asked.

His father worked at the Riverfeld Academy and spent most nights away from the manse.  When he was home, he told stories.  Lately, he’d been teaching Wedge to read and just last Market Day, his father had given him a little book filled with stories about the moon and the stars.

“Tell me about the moon.”

His mother laughed as she watered the ferns ran along the side of their wash basin in neat, hardwood boxes.

“A good story, that one, I’d like to hear it again too.”

“Very well,” his father said, “In the…  how is the Ça’deç’adtach phrased in the Second Record?  Marion, do you remember?”

“Oh, Aegin.  Never mind the phrasing.”

She set their three ceramic mugs on the table by the side of her husband’s chair.

“In the beginning,” she said, “there was no end and there was no middle, for all that is had not yet begun.  What was had always been and always would.  There was only the one and no other.  In the beginning, all was only ever one, cold and dark and alone.  Until one became all and the world was born out of loneliness.”

“Mmmm, never mind the phrasing,” his father said.  “The one was the sun and Welan was his name.  But the sun was cold and dark and black, alone in a vast emptiness and he despaired of his loneliness.  So he created the world, Ar’Dur, to be his bride and the mother of all else that would come.”

“Like mother?”  Wedge asked.

“Very much like your mother,” his father said, smiling.

“Ar’Dur was green and beautiful and full of life.  And she appeared to Welan in the worst of his despair.  Welan spent his life alone in the deep black night and Ar’Dur made him whole.  Just like your mother did for me.”

Wedge saw the look that his parents shared.  His mother dropped her hand to his father’s face ran her fingers down his cheek.

“When I first saw your mother,” his father’s said, “I was just starting at the Academy.  I was young and scared and she was the world itself.  Nothing had ever been so beautiful.  Your mother is much more beautiful than the whole of the world.”

Aegin leaned down to his son and whispered.

“And much fatter as well!”

Marion hung the kettle over the fire, turned and swatted her husband’s head.

“Watch it, Aegin,” she warned.  “I’m bigger than you!”

Wedge giggled.

His mother was huge, gravid with a belly that was as endless as it was beautiful.

“Yes,” his father said, pulling his wife onto his lap, “your mother is very much like the world.  Beautiful, round, and full up with life!

“Welan and Ar’Dur loved each other and that changed Welan.  Welan cast off his shroud of dark and blazed bright and joyful and yellow.  His passion burned hot and brought light and heat to the vast emptiness.  He was no longer alone and he was happy.”

“So was she.”  Wedge’s mother murmured.

“But Welan tired.  Making Ar’Dur, warming her and filling her with life tired the old man, so he doused his flame and slept.”

“Like your father!  Do you find it tiring, old man, to fill me with life?”

“I do, and yet…  like the sun, I rise again and again.”

They kissed and Wedge looked away.  The kettle was warming in the fire.  The iron was black against the orange flame and white smoke billowed up the chimney.  Soon there would be hot tea and his mother would hold him until he fell asleep.

“Each night Welan slept and Ar’Dur was left alone.  She grew frightened in the dark and so Welan gave her the stars.  He scattered them across the sky so that she would have company.  Each night, Welan would sleep and the stars would come and watch over Ar’Dur until morning.  Welan would rise and the stars would scatter.  And so it went for endless ages.”

“But the stars grew to love Ar’Dur too,” his mother added.  “They do still.  They spend their lives watching Ar’Dur from such a great distance and their longing builds and builds until they can no longer bear it.  Then they hurl themselves from the sky.  They love Ar’Dur so much that they jump from the sky to reach her.  You’ve seen that haven’t you?”

His mother winked and Wedge blushed.

There were many things that he loved about his mother.  Lying with her on the grass outside the chapel and watching the stars was his favorite.  They did that only when father was away.

His father continued, “But though the stars leap out of love, they are dangerous to Ar’Dur.  Most stars fall quickly and die suddenly.  But some–the oldest and the largest–their longing is great enough that they may actually reach down and touch Ar’Dur.  And when a lover comes so far, he sometimes burns with his desire and crashes in pain and heat.  The stars love Ar’Dur but their love also scars her.”

His mother spoke softly, “Sometimes love can scar, my child.  Sometimes love can burn like fire and feel like a wound in your chest.  But never forget that love also heals.  The stars hurt the world, but they also heal it.  Whatever love scars, only love can heal.”

He’d known that what she’d said was true; there was no hurt or pain so great that his mother’s love couldn’t heal.

His father continued, “Welan saw the scars on his bride and he grew angry, so he devised a plan.  Welan came to Ar’Dur and gave her a beautiful child.  He came to her in a great fire that burned the whole sky.  He shook Ar’Dur with his love and out of her belly came our great silver moon, Marvair.  Larger and brighter than any of the stars, Marvair was set to guard his mother while his father slept.  Like you from your mother, the moon was born out of the great belly of the world.”

“But there is only one moon!”  Wedge said.  “Soon I’ll have a brother to help me protect mother while you’re away!”

Wedge’s father laughed.  “Yes…  or a sister.”

“And then I won’t be so alone, I’ll have someone to play with.”

“My boy,” his mother said, “You will never be alone.  You are my beautiful silver moon.”  She knelt on the rug and held Wedge close.

He pressed his head to her belly, sure that he could hear his brother in her belly.  He knew it was to be a boy; he’d seen his brother’s smiling face in his dreams.

“I love you,” he whispered.

The universe was born out of loneliness into darkness.  But out of that came family and light and everything that lives.  The night was dark but the moon was bright.  The black was cold and vast but the kettle whistled and the fire was warm and Wedge snuggled against his mother.

Dur Ba’Ar Merrihynday 3576

Aegin was back at the Academy and Wedge helped his mother count the money from the collection.  He counted the chaff and the haunches, stacking the coins into neat piles of ten, when he found a genuine silver punch.  He yelped in excitement and held the coin out for his mother to see.

Her dark skin was ghostly pale, her brow slick with sweat and a spot of red bloomed on the floor by her feet.

“Markus, fetch the midwife.”  Her voice was dry and brittle, crackling like old straw.

Wedge ran and the bright silver coin clattered to the floor and rolled into the pool of blood.

The labor was long.

Wedge brought the midwife and stayed though she told him to leave; he was Marvair, his mother’s moon and guard.  He kept the fire hot and the kettle full.  He washed the bloody rags, one after the other, as the midwife tossed them aside.  They worked at a feverish pace without speaking, Marion’s screams making enough sound for everyone.  Until her voice died and her cries turned to whispered, desperate mewling.  And then, after hours and hours, even the whimpering stopped and she struggled just to breathe.

And the child came.

The silver moon shone through the high windows of the manse and turned all the colors of the room to muted grays.  The white of his mother’s vestments were streaked with the deep black of drying blood.  The green ferns that hung along the basin looked pallid and sickly as if they too had been drowned in the sea of pain that washed over the room.  Everything had turned as matte and dull as the midwife’s hair.

Everything except the baby.  The baby was blue.

Dark circles ringed her closed little eyes and her lips were purple and thin.  The midwife gave the child to Wedge as she cut the snaking cord that wrapped around its slender neck.

His mother had told him that when his brother or sister came, there would be crying and noise.  She’d said that the baby would fill the little manse with wailing, screaming life.

But the room was silent.

This small, pallid thing that lay so still would never play games in the garden or run with Wedge to the river.  Wedge lay it down and crawled onto the wet straw at his mother’s side.  He pressed himself close to his mother and listened hard to his mother’s whispered, ragged breath.  Her eyes were closed and her shrunken belly, once so vast and great, now rose and fell in shallow shudders as she struggled for each breath.

He clutched his mother’s hand and held it tight against his chest.  Wet with sweat and slick with her own blood, her skin was cold to touch.

She opened her eyes and they seemed softer, smaller than they had been, as if she was falling away, dropping to someplace deep inside herself.  Her mouth opened and her hand closed tight on his own and her chest fell slowly as her last breath left her body.

Wedge felt the pain and the longing of the oldest and most distant of the stars.  He folded himself into her and imagined that he could leap from out of the cold and the dark and drop into her eyes.  He pressed his lips to her cheek and begged her softly; he would fall a thousand times into those deep green eyes and burn happily every time if only she would breathe.

Her cheek fell slack and her eyes turned gray.  Her hand slipped silently from his and she lay as still and as quiet as her daughter.

Much later, after his father had finally come home and all the women from his mother’s congregation clutched him in their arms and fussed and pressed and wept over him, after they wrapped his mother and his sister in heavy Saluo chepacha blankets and buried them in the small chapel yard, and after the prelate from the sanctuary in Fording had said the blessings over the grave, and after the men scrubbed and cleaned the blood from the floor of the manse, and after everyone had finally, finally gone, Wedge sat with his father by the fire in their room and asked to hear the story of Welan and Ar’Dur one more time.

Aegin stood and emptied the kettle onto the fire.  The embers sputtered and the last of the light flickered and slowly died.  In the fading half-light Wedge’s father tossed the kettle to the floor and cursed.

“It’s just a story, Wedge.  I am not the sun and you are not the moon.”

Wedge stood slowly and walked out into the night.  As he crossed the threshold of the manse and walked out into the night, he heard his father fall to his knees and whisper, “and our world is gone.”

Wedge raised his head and stared into the sky, but the night was dull and black and heavy with clouds.  There was no silvery moon to stand guard over the world and there were no longing stars waiting to make their final leap.

Dur Ba’Ar Tyrday 3576

It didn’t take them long to pack their things.  The prelate from Fording was staying on at the Manse and Aegin was due back at the Academy.  Aegin wrapped his son in the last and the best of Marion’s homespun blankets, a soft woolen wrap patterned in spiraling shades of blue.

It smelled of his mother.

Wedge buried his head in its folds as his father lifted him onto the back of the skinny bay.  The horse was old and weathered, borrowed from the Riverfeld stables, and the ride was slow.  It was late night when his father laid him on a pile of threadbare cotton blankets piled next to the single cot in a stone cell.  In the morning, his father took him to the kitchen.

Dur Ba’Ar Faelday 3576

He followed his father through a maze of corridors and down spare stone steps.  He cowered behind his father’s legs as Aegin spoke to a bear of a man dressed in thick white robes.

“I’ve work and you’re still too young to study.  You’ll stay here until I’m done.”

Wedge buried his face in his father’s side.  “I want mama.”

Aegin put his hands on his son’s head and caressed him softly, but said nothing.

Wedge spent his first few hours at the academy hidden in a corner of the kitchen.  More than a dozen cooks piled food into giant crocks and pots that they set over open fires or stowed in the huge stone ovens that lined the long outer wall.  The cooks moved constantly, like bees in a honey hive, ordered and purposeful.  At the center of the buzzing, very much the queen, was the largest man that Wedge had ever seen: a great waddling hulk draped in acres of white cloth that fell across his vast bulk in folds of fabric that swelled and rolled like waves when he moved.

He spoke rarely, only occasionally offering quiet instruction to the younger men who buzzed ceaselessly around the room.  Eventually, after a time, there was a lull in the activity and the younger cooks fled the hot kitchen and took their morning meal outside where they drank pints of small beer and heckled the scullery maids who were busy with day’s washing.

The big man walked over to Wedge.

“You’re Aegin’s boy.  Markus then?”

Wedge shook his head.  “Wedge.”

“Wedge?  That what your mother called you?”

Wedge nodded as the room started to swim and his eyes filled with water.  He shuffled his feet and rubbed his nose.

The big man bent over, bringing his face level with Wedge’s.  The fat man’s face was pocked with acne and flushed red from the heat of the kitchen, but his eyes were kind.  He put a giant ham of a hand on Wedge’s shoulder and spoke softly.

“I know what happened.  And I don’t mind it if you cry a bit.  I would myself.”

Wedge rubbed his eyes dry and gulped in air.

“My name’s Addison.  Everyone calls me Addie.  Aye, I know it’s a girl’s name, but we don’t often get to pick what we’re called, now do we?”

Wedge shook his head.  The cook hooked his thumbs into the neckline of his tunic and pulled at the fabric.  He glanced around the kitchen for a moment and turned back to Wedge.

“I know there’s a story to your name, and I’d like to hear it sometime.  But only when you’re ready.”

Wedge nodded.

“In the meantime, you might as well help.  Come with me.”

Wedge followed Addie as he waddled across the kitchen, past boiling pots and hot ovens and rows of fresh bread.  The air was thick with the smell of roasting meat and cooking vegetables.  A steady stream of young boys filed in and out of the kitchen, delivering and picking up from the long tables that stretched the length of the room.  At the far end near the rear door, three large baskets sat next to a small stool with a small knife on it.  Two of the baskets were empty; large brown potatoes filled the last.  Addie handed a potato to Wedge.

“That’s a potato and it needs peeling.  You ever peel a potato, Wedge?  I’ll show you how.”

Addie reached under the folds of his tunic and pulled out a small knife.  Wedge took the knife from off the stool.  He peeled his potato quickly, dropping the peeled potato into the empty basket.

The cook laughed, his head shaking, “Well, I see you already know how.  Peel that basket and tell me when you’re done, then.”

The cook turned to go and Wedge took a seat on the small stool.  As Addie turned to go, Wedge spoke.

“I used to peel potatoes with my mother every market day.  She would heat oil in the kettle and cook the potatoes in the oil.  Potato wedges.  It was our…” his voice died in his throat.

“It was my favorite,” he whispered.

Addie stood silent for a moment.

“I like them that way too,” he said.

From then on, Wedge spent most of his days in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, washing mushrooms and helping with the giant pots of stew.  Some nights, he’d curl up in one of the huge empty baskets and sleep next to the still warm ovens.  His father would collect him late at night and they’d walk in silence to the small gray cell that they shared at the edge of the library.  The Dret-a-Katerr had given Wedge leave to live with his father and the promise of a place in the Academy’s classes when he was old enough.

Wedge and Aegin spoke little.  They were lost in the dark, orbiting a vanished world.  The empty space between them swallowed their sound.  They communicated through touch and glance.  Speech was too dangerous, as if at any moment conversation could turn to what they had lost and they would fall spiraling into the void.  Wedge would cry out in the night and his father would lower a hand and silently rub his son’s back.  Wedge would bring his father bread from the kitchen and sit with him in silence while he ate his midday meal.

Aegin brought books from the library and Wedge read them all.  All save the book of stories about the moon.  Wedge kept that as he would keep a talisman, even sleeping with it at night, but he would not read it.

Fall turned to winter and Wedge watched the Aenday dances from the ledge of the window in their narrow cell as Aegin read by candlelight.  The air grew cold and Aegin and Wedge slept close, sharing the blue chepacha between them.  The chill of winter faded and the spring rains brought new grass, and Wedge came to his eighth Maidenday and began his formal lessons in the Academy.  Spring turned to summer and the sun rose high over the Academy while Aegin worked in the library, silently and meticulously repairing an old copy of the Second Record.

By the end of Wedge’s first year at the academy, Aegin and Wedge had spoken their last words to each other.  They shared the space and the emptiness that their mother left as a treasure: their mutual silence a devotion they paid to her memory.

Wedge took the silence as natural.  Even in the kitchens or in his lessons he rarely spoke.  He attended the academy on the patronage of the abbot and his classmates were the sons of provincial nobility and wealthy prelates; he had little in common with boys who owned their own horses and never suffered to wash their own linens.  He spent his time outside of lessons working in the kitchen, tending to the books with his father and keeping their small gray cell neat and clean.

Even as he studied the history of Ar’Dur, read the law of the Second Compact, and copied maps of the Empire, his world narrowed.  He sat on the ledge of the high window in their room and watched the courtyard, or he sat with his father amid the stacks of books in the vast library and read by candlelight.  Or he folded himself into the noise and the bustle of the kitchen, chopping vegetables, kneading the dough for bread, or basting the meat as it turned on a spit.  In the kitchen, away from the tedium of lectures and the stillness of the library, Wedge lost himself in the heat and the sweat of real work.  He found a still and simple peace as he sat on the stool and peeled potato after potato and scrubbed mushroom after mushroom.  In the bustle of the kitchen, amidst the noise, the smell and the heat, the outside world faded and hours slipped by unnoticed and unregarded.

Wedge spent his next eight years in a silent world shielded by silence and wrapped in loneliness.

Nevell Myr Perrynday 3585

One became all and the world was born out of loneliness.

He was peeling potatoes in the rear of the kitchen, beside the door that led outside to the roasting spits and big wash basins.  The door opened and the world burst into being, his loneliness shattered.

She was lightning without thunder, a burst of light and heat that roiled through him the moment he saw her.  She was creation and awareness in a flash.  The dull gray walls of the kitchen blurred to a delicate sandy mist that set off the white and pale blue of her dress.  The clatter of the knives and the shouts of the cooks faded into a muted hum.  Light itself shifted and arranged itself around the copper highlights in her  chestnut hair that slipped from her white cotton cap and fell across her face in gentle curls.  It was roiling hot in the kitchen, but the air outside still held a winter chill and her cheeks flushed warm and red.

She smelled of lilacs and honey.

She looked around the room, clearly lost.  Addie waddled over and asked the girl if he could help her.

“Yes,” she said, “my mistress, Lady Colton, is asking for fresh butter.”

Addie, whose bulk had only grown over the years, simply grunted and turned.  He motioned over his shoulder to Wedge.

“This one will get the butter for you.”

Her eyes were the same bright green as his mother’s.  But where he last looked and felt his world melt away, now the world seemed to solidify and create itself anew.  He flushed as he stood and knew that the heat didn’t come from the ovens or the fire pits, but from his heart.

One became all and the world was born out of loneliness; he’d known the story for years, but still he was surprised when it finally happened to him.

Uncategorized Aen, Birth

I’m getting in touch with my inner geek. (Well, OK… maybe outer geek as well.)

A map for my work-in-progress is now here.

Aen Aen

Uncategorized Aen, map

I’m taking a public leap.

Up at the top, you might notice there’s a new tab, “Aen.”

I’ve been writing a book. It’s still very much a work in progress, and I’m still a fair way from completion. But I’m also a lot farther along that I imagined I would be at this point. I’ve got about 80,000 - 90,000 words written (depending on whether a particular story line makes the cut), with another 30,000 to 40,000 left to write.

I’ve decided to post a few sample chapters (just the one to start with) and solicit feedback. Comments on the sample chapter are open and I look forward to hearing whatever you have to say. Even if you don’t like it!

I’m also looking for interested readers. If you’re interested in reading the rest, I’d be very happy for feedback on the entirety of the project! But I am definitely look for feedback. So, let me know if you’re interested!

The prologue, The Living Sight is the first chapter up.

Aen, fiction Aen

Sielle Wer Merrihynday 3584

A lump of rock, roughly the size and shape of a man’s heart.  A dull black, mottled, lumpy little stone.  It could have come from any hill, been plowed under in any pasture.  It had taken twelve years and had cost him his fortune.  Six years chasing rumor and legend, three years establishing a complex web  of couriers, scouts, merchants and spies that spanned three continents, another three years to actually get the rock in his hand.  He’d used four different ships to carry it across the seas.  Every man, every wagon, every horse had cost him coin.  He’d bought and bribed and paid outrageous amounts.  And then he’d paid more to ensure their silence.  He’d sunk the ships and had the men killed.  His vast network unraveled just as it was put to use.  All save one: Will, his favorite and most trusted acolyte.  Will lay writhing on the dirt floor, dying.

Baron Walter d’Gillay, Anointed Prophet of Light, The Living Sight, and the man whom thousands lovingly called their Seer, watched the young man’s mouth work furiously, contorting in pain and surprise.  No sound came; the dagger in his chest had stolen his voice.  Walter bent over and laid his finger to his friend’s lips.  He caressed Will’s head and pressed his lips to Will’s forehead.  “For you, my boy, all for you.”  Then he wrenched the dagger free and stepped to the side, dodging the spurt of blood.  Will’s life poured out of his body and pooled on the dusty floor.

Walter wiped the blade clean on his kerchief.  That was the last who could trace anything back to him.  Well, the last save Beyn, but he needed Beyn a while longer.  Sheathing his blade, Walter pulled off his cape and wound the cloth around the rock.  He put the bundle on the table by the door and then dragged the boy to the great hole in the center of the floor.  He piled the body on the heap of corpses, kindling, firewood and long broken shafts of splintered wood that rose out of the shallow pit.  He grabbed a lamp from the floor and emptied its oil over the cracked wood.  Once lit, the fire would burn for days.

Walter collected his little bundle and shut the farmhouse door carefully behind him.  He measured his gait and cast careful, casual glances back at the trees that surrounded the little farm.  He was alone.  The farm, such as it was–two crumbling mud brick hovels and a lonely, fallow field–sat at the base of a rocky outcrop, high on an empty hill, miles from the spare collection of huts and hovels of the nearest village.  There would be little sorrow when these buildings burned.  It might be weeks before some wandering fool even discovered the charred ruins.  The farm–built on sterile, rocky ground by some desperate peasant with more hope than sense–had been abandoned for as long as he could remember.  As a boy, he had flushed deer from his father’s woods into this very field.  It had lain fallow even then.  Walter smiled at the thought of whatever poor, nameless bastard had last tried to run a plow through this ground.  He was that man’s servant, had always been servant to the nameless.  His calling had not altered; his purpose had not wavered.

He came to an old hut, a building that must once have housed feed for whatever meager livestock the farm managed to keep.  It was old and the walls were made of dry, cracked elare earth, the roof a threadbare and worn thatch with more holes than cover.  There were no windows, just a single narrow open doorway, half the proper height out of which poured a thick, black, acrid smoke.  Walter put his hand over his mouth and braced himself as he bent to enter the hut.

The stench was overwhelming.  The room was foul with the stink of burning flesh.  Walter’s eyes watered and he doubled over with a shuddering series of hard, hacking coughs.  His bundle slid from his fingers as he choked on the vile air.  As his spasms subsided, Walter pawed the floor for his bundle.  With the smoke stinging his eyes and clouding the light from the door, he couldn’t see clearly and his fingers fumbled through the soggy, wet straw at his feet.  The only light came from narrow gaps in the rotting thatch roof, where what little sun did manage to sneak through caught the swirling smoke and made pillars of pale light that seemed to rise as columns from the still smoldering straw.  Walter found the wrapped rock and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand as he stood.  When he spoke, his voice was ragged, “I trust the girl was satisfactory?”

“Yes,” came as the barely audible reply.  The room’s only other occupant lay on a long, smooth slab of black volcanic glass that sat in the center of the room like a ceremonial altar.

Naked, hairless and blue, the man’s body was covered in the raised swirls and puckered ridges of a hundred thousand branding marks, the pattern of scars interrupted only by a thin band of silvery metal.  The strip began behind the man’s right ear and ran like a river down his face.  It followed the contours of his cheekbones, dropped down over his chin, wrapped around the back of his neck, slipped between his shoulder blades and ran across his back and under his left arm.  The metal snaked down his belly and vanished in a pool at his navel.  The smooth surface of the metal, grafted seamlessly to his blue skin, seemed to flow like liquid, as if the narrow band of metal were glass, through which Walter could see soft silver-green smoke roil and billow.  Walter regarded the blue man with distaste.  He thought if such a thing was possible, that the damned man’s skin was a deeper shade of blue than it had been the day before.  The Noruunan raised his head slightly and peered at Walter with those unnaturally white eyes.  Walter turned his eyes downward and began to unwrap his bundle.

“Where is she?”  Walter asked.  “Did she flee?”  If the damn girl had got away there would be trouble.

“She did not flee,” the man on the slab answered.  Walter chocked on the smoke but did not press the issue.  The Noruunan was surely a demon, of that he had no doubt, and you didn’t question a demon if you didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Is that it?”  The Norunnan asked.

“Yes, this is it.”  Walter turned the rock around in his hands.  “Strange to think that so much power could live in a piece of earth so small.”

The small blue man laughed and without moving or opening his eyes said, “You are a fool, d’Gillay.  You are a blind and senseless fool.”

“A fool that is paying you well for your service, providing you women and keeping you fed and hidden.  You should learn to show proper respect, Beyn Rhiall.”

The blue man sighed and turned on his side to face Walter.  “I am not one of your fawning acolytes, Walter.  You are no prophet to me and I know enough of this to know that you are a fool.”

Beyn pulled himself up to sit at the edge of the glass rock and reached for a leather bag and a cup that sat at the side of the glass bed.  From the leather bag he poured a measure of gray-green powder into the cup.  He then traded the bag for a larger water skin and filled the cup slowly with water.  Beyn dipped a finger into the mixture and stirred the slurry until the water, now thick with the powder, turned a dark blue.  He whispered, “Arod’aeo daousas,” and drank the contents quickly.

“Bring it here,” he said.

“Is it enough?  Will it serve?  Is it pure?”

Beyn cackled.  “Pure?  No…. this is not pure.  This is dirty, fouled ore.  It will be a great sin to bond with ore as black as this.”

Walter’s face grew hard, “What are you saying?  After all of this…”

Beyn waved his hand dismissively and interrupted, “It will be a great sin to work with this, but I am a great sinner.  I have worked with worse.”

The Noruunan stood.  “We do it now.  The rock is warm and I am ready.  Remove your clothes and lie on the glass.”

Walter stood still.  Some small part of him hesitated.  He was doing this for them, for all the people that couldn’t…. For all of those that had no hope.  He was their savior.  Surely, surely it would all be worth it.  He remembered Will’s face, how surprised the young man had been.  For Will… the gods will, surely the gods will.

The Noruunan sneered as if he could hear Walter’s unspoken thought.  “You would have been wise to heed your fear, fool.  But it is too late now.  The metal sings to me and demands to be used.  Save your pleadings and your petty fantasies.  Tell them to the pain.”

Too much had been sacrificed.  Too many men had given their lives for him, too many trusted him.  Too many depended on him.  He was doing this for them, for them.  The pain, the sin, this blue man, he would endure it all.  Walter shrugged out of his shirt and leggings.  He took his clothes to a corner of the hut and made a small pile on a patch of dry straw.

“The smallclothes too.  The old gods do not know shame.”

Walter hesitated and then removed his undergarments as well.  Naked, he sat on the narrow edge of the long black slab.  The night glass felt smooth and cool to the touch.  It had taken five men three days to drag the heavy glass up to the farm.  They had worked at night, pulling its mass up the side of the hill in a makeshift wooden sled.  Then he’d had them dig the pit tin the main house.  Now their bodies lay in that same pit.  The boy Will and the smashed remnants of the sled made the rest of the pyre.  Walter reached down and bound his feet with the leather cords that circled through holes in the glass.  He lay back and spread his arms as Beyn wrapped cords first around Walter’s waist and then around his hands.  Beyn tied the cords to straps and stretched Walter’s arms wide.  Walter had no purchase and relaxed himself against the glass, his body bare and exposed.  His eyes darted to the pile of clothes in the corner.  His dagger….

The blue man saw Walter’s eyes and laughed with derision.  “You worry now about the blade?  You think that I might cut your throat and make off with your ore?  You think that I am a simple thief?”

Walter shook his head mutely.  Like the boy in the farmhouse, his voice had been stolen from him.

Beyn stood next to Walter’s outstretched body and traced a finger around the swirls of scars on his own chest.  “I am Beyn Rhiall b’rey Ba’Wren, daven of a house of Noruun.  I am salwa’daousas.  I have these scars by my own hands, that I might remind myself of the pain of my bonding.  I am a servant of the bond and the Raeden is my love.”

With that, he took the lump of rock in his cupped hands and brought it gently to his lips.  He blew out softly and the rock and began to steam.  Beyn blew until the rock glowed red hot and Walter could feel its heat.  Beyn held the glowing rock out over Walter’s body and began to chant.

“Wosai chal wael pele sal raenaecha pele o warho daousas, podal saou soleendes’alo sal poulaefaesedo an dol.  Imwaeel saou womcheda pele o daousas a sal edalamcha son Raeden.”

The ore grew brighter and hotter as Beyn chanted, changing color from red to white.  Beyn moved his hands around the lump of rock, pressing and shaping the white hot ore.  When he had smoothed the rock to a ball, he held it out away from Walter’s bare body.

Beyn closed his eyes and chanted, “Ferel saou womcheda echlewésda naou nalos, poulaefaesel ascha assólaee.  Tono A’ou ous aenpoulo a chal foae faaecho saou salwo, palnaechael saou salwo pele semd’lel ascha assólaee da aenpoulathes!  Poulaefaesel o nacher son aschas nalos da naou.  Poulaefaesel o naemélaeo.”

The ore erupted in green flame and molten rock ran through Beyn’s fingers where it fell to floor and ignited the already charred straw.

Beyn chanted rhythmically as he continued to shape and work the molten rock in his hands, “Cleberho saou womcheda echlewés da naen, palnaechael o assólaee seael daeschemcha!  A’ou palchamsal pele wosai!”

The fire on the ground spread, finally lighting the wet straw at the edge of the room.  Fresh smoke filled the small hut quickly as the molten rock dripped from the blue man’s fingers and the fire spread.

Walter’s eyes were wide with fear and he thrashed in his bonds as panic and heat robbed him of the last of his courage.  He stared, wild with terror, at the man who held molten rock in his hands and stood calmly in the flames.  He opened his mouth as he felt the hair on his outstretched arms crisp and burn, but his voice had fled with his resolve and Baron Walter d’Gillay, Anointed Prophet of Light, leader of the Sacred and the Penitent, mewled silently as tears welled in his eyes.

Beyn fell silent as the green flames that sparked and spun from the rock began to flicker and the ore stopped its drip.  The Norunnan cradled the pool of liquid heat in his hands, passing it from hand to hand like quicksilver.  He moved the molten ore back over Walter’s body and in a flat voice without affect he said, “Ischa é o nacher da o daousas.  Wosai womcheda sal raenaecha pele saou womcheda.” Then he turned his hands over and poured the metal slowly into Walter’s navel.

Walter found his voice.

His body stretched taught as he threw his head back and screamed.  The pain was unendurable.  He could feel the metal burn through his skin and bore into his body.

Beyn moved his hands slowly, guiding the thin line of liquid rock up Walter’s chest.  As Walter thrashed and writhed under the stream, the line of metal snaked up his body in sweeping curves.  When the river of pain had reached his chest, the blue man closed his eyes and spoke again, “Daousas, d’ouaee naou nalos.”

The air filled with the acrid smell of burning flesh and Walter’s chest heaved in pain as he gulped for air.  The smoke choked him as it burned his mouth and throat.  The river of molten metal reached his neck and Walter cried in anguish.  He thrashed to the side and the metal ran up the side of his head and around his ear.  He thrashed again and the last of it pooled into his right eye socket.

He felt his eyeball swell and burst.  The metal ran freely into his skull as the pain consumed the universe.  His bonds fell from his hands and his bed of glass slipped out from under him.  The Noruunan vanished into the smoke.  Even the smoke began to burn in the heat.  At last he felt his very body melt in agony.  Consumed, swallowed by pain, Walter floated free.  He swam in the pain and pressure and heat until it seemed as if his very soul would explode.  His mind reeled as his body fell away and he dissolved into a void of white.  He was alone, a drop of black–a fleck of filth–in an ocean of unending purity.  His mind bent under the pressure of the white and he felt his foulness burn.  He was being pushed into the purity and away from the pain, and even as he felt the pain recede, he longed for it and his mind scrabbled to escape the unceasing vastness of the white.  He entered it as a thorn, tearing it and staining it with his sin and corruption.

And then it ended.

Walter choked on the smoke, his body dripping wet with sweat and exertion.  He raised his head and could see the silver-green river of metal running along his body.  The band of metal blended without scars into his skin.  Like the strip that ran along the blue man’s body, its surface seemed to flow as if covered with oil.  Although the smoke in the hut was still suffocating, the fire on the floor was dying and its heat dissipating.  Walter’s lungs heaved and he was racked by hacking coughs as Beyn untied the straps that bound him.  Beyn fished a square bundle of cloth from a corner of the room and scooped up his cup and leather bag.

Beyn looked down at him for a moment as he unfolded the cloth and shrugged casually into his dull gray robe.  He said, “You have been bonded.  You belong now to the old gods.”

Walter ran his hand along the smooth metal and asked, “When… when will I know?”

“Soon, soon enough,” Beyn replied.  “I require water.”  He turned his back on Walter and left the hut.

After a moment, Walter pulled himself to his feet and looked around the charred hut for his clothing.  The fire had ruined his cape, but his leggings and shirt were still wearable.  Walter pulled on what was left of his garments and followed the blue man out into the day.

The sun was blinding after the dark of the smoke.  Walter swayed and fell to his knees.  He squinted in the bright light and watched Beyn crossing the field to the farmhouse.  Tentatively, afraid at what he might find, Walter brought his hand to his right eye.  The eye was encased in smooth, hard metal, but he had no sensation of losing sight.  He closed his left eye and the world remained.  Slowly, he struggled to his feet and followed Beyn to the farmhouse.  Water would be good.

Walter entered the building to find Beyn sitting on the floor, leaning with his back against a stone wall.  He was mixing his blue slurry with the powder from his bag.

Walter ran his hands over the metal on his chest.  He walked to the edge of the large shallow pit in the center of the room and regarded the corpses of the men who had helped him become what he now was.  He had done this for them.  For all of them.

“For them?  No, you did this for yourself.  You are bonded.  It is no use to lie.”

Walter turned to the blue man, realizing that he had spoken his thoughts aloud.  “I am their Seer.  My sight is for their aid.  Their sacrifice was necessary; I did this for all those who have given so much.”

Beyn regarded him blankly and sipped from his cup.

Walter turned back to the pit.  Will’s, was turned on its back and the boy’s eyes stared vacantly up at Walter.  Walter reached his hand down to close the boy’s eyes and felt the strip of metal that wound along his chest grow hot.  As he touched the dead boy’s head, Walter felt his right eye warm.  In that eye through which the metal had poured, he could see….

He saw a woman, his mother.  She smiled.  No, not his mother: Will’s mother.  Now he saw a baby boy.  His… Will’s son.  The faces rushed by one after another: lovers, boyhood friends, a brother, a wife…. Walter was overcome.  Tears welled in his left eye and he knew the anguish of the life that he had taken.  The images rose and fell as the young man’s life unspooled like thread in Walter’s mind.  Will’s wife, their little home, his own face, Will’s brothers in the Sacred and the Penitent, the farmhouse and the lump of dull ore.  He saw himself plunge the dagger into Will’s breast and felt the shock and surprise of his own betrayal.

Shaking with feeling, Walter lifted the dead boy’s body from the pyre.  He felt the boy’s anger rise.  For him, he had done all of this for him! Walter held the boy’s body to his own.  He could hold the boy’s anger, he would take this anger and hold it as a reminder of all those who had given so much.  Tears ran down Walter’s face as he hugged the body of the dead boy.  He felt the metal flow on his body, felt it ripple and move.  The dead boy’s memories poured through him in a rush, his vision clouded and his arms tightened.  He pressed the body against his chest and bent to kiss the boy’s head.  He was holding the boy’s life inside him, taking it, and keeping it safe.  He felt a rush of heat and love and he sobbed.  He had seen the whole of Will’s life; he would remember it all.

Will moved.

Walter released the body and stepped back in shock.  The body fell to the floor and Walter followed, suddenly weak.  The river of metal on his body ran cold and he shivered with exhaustion.  He looked over at Beyn and saw that the blue man had stood and was staring at Will.  Walter opened his mouth to ask a question just as the dead boy’s body crawled to its feet.

Will looked around the room.  He ran his hands over the hole in his chest and opened his mouth to speak.  His mouth opened and closed soundlessly as his chest quivered and the wound in his chest sucked wetly against the cloth of his shirt.

Walter struggled to his feet as the boy stumbled awkwardly and fell against the pile of corpses and wood.  Walter threw back his head and cried to the gods.  His voice rang in the little house.  “I am become the true Seer; I am the Living Sight!”

Walter whirled to the boy, still fumbling against the unlit pyre.  “For you!  The pain, the sacrifice, all for you!  I have given you life, Will!  I have given you life!”  Walter grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.  “You are the first.  The first to be touched by my gift.”  Will’s face contorted as his wound sucked violently at the air and his mouth open and closed.

Walter turned back to Beyn.  Beyn was smiling, a grin that spread from blue ear to blue ear.  He laughed.  Walter laughed with him and held his hand out in thanks.  He said, “Thank you.  You have brought…”

Walter’s head exploded as a heavy length of wood broke against the back of his skull.  He crumpled to the floor.  He tried to pull himself up on his arms and felt the wood strike the back of his head again.  He turned himself over, slipping in his own blood, and he could hear Beyn’s laughter grow louder. Will straddled Walter and raised his makeshift club.  Walter’s vision clouded and he opened his mouth.

“For you, all for you.”

Will’s face contorted in a rictus of hate as he swung the club and crushed Walter’s head against the floor.

In the corner, Beyn Rhiall b’rey Ba’Wren laughed.

Uncategorized Aen, Beyn Rhiall, Walter d'Gillay